Pirate Bay Launches Secure Private Network

STOCKHOLM – Ever defiant, The Pirate Bay has launched beta-testing of an encrypted virtual private network its founders hope will make more difficult the enforcement of copyright complaints against both the service and its users.

Freedom from hassles comes at a price, though: The VPN, which reportedly has 3,000 testers at the moment, will cost 5 euros monthly when launched in alpha. According to the gigantic BitTorrent index’s blog, another 180,000 prospective users have signed up and should be online within a month, when TPB expects to open the VPN to all comers.

Displaying all the cheek for which they became known during their recent trial and subsequent conviction on copyright-infringement charges, TPB’s owners have named the new service IPREDator. The name is a stab at Sweden’s IPRED copyright law under which Carl Lundstrom, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde were convicted shortly after the law went into effect April 1. The men are appealing the Swedish high court’s ruling and their sentences of one year in jail each and a combined fine of $3.6 million, part of which is restitution to Hollywood music and movie moguls.

IPREDator is billed as more secure than a traditional VPN because the service will keep no network records. That, TPB’s crew said, will protect both the service and its users. Without records, even if a court issues a warrant for underlying data, there will be no underlying data to obtain.